[In Newsletter, no 2 (1974), Dr G S Smith drew attention to the fact that there are in many places in Britain examples of Russian cannon, manufactured by Charles Gascoigne and his successors, that were brought back as trophies after the Crimean War. He called on members of the Study Group to send him details of such cannon and possibly photographs with the eventual aim of producing a catalogue.
Recently I was in correspondence with Ms Jana Bara in connection with an essay she was preparing as part of a graduate assignment; she subse¬quently kindly sent me a copy of her work which included some interesting information on "Gascoigne guns" in Canada, and it is with her permission that I include here the final pages of her essay. Editor. ]
Ihe cannon cast at the Aleksandrovskii works at Petrozavodsk saw service in wars of the second half of the eighteenth century and later during the Crimean War, particularly at Sevastopol. Sevastopol held a crucially important strategic position on the Black Sea, a bastion against the centuries-old threat of invasion by sea from Asia Minor. The harbour, heavily garrisoned and fortified, could accommodate the largest war-ships in the Russian Imperial Navy. The forts of Sevastopol bristled with heavy artillery.
The Russian artillery service under Nicholas I was a "corps d elite" and the Russian arsenal was rich in war material: at the commencement of the siege of Sevastopol there were one hundred and seventy-two pieces of ordnance, many very heavy guns already mounted upon the works, and countless stores of artillery pieces in reserve. Sevastopol fully justified Sir John Burgoynes warning, that "The more the Allies looked at it the less they would like it". After a twelve-months siege, when Sevastopol fell, there were hundreds of guns still unused in the artillery park. Lieut-Col E Bruce Hamley in his book The Story of the Campaign of Sevastopol. (1855) records how...>>>